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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25904128">Twin High-Maintenance Machines</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlingthefool/pseuds/Starlingthefool'>Starlingthefool</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>90's lesbian culture, Beverly Marsh &amp; Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Beverly Marsh realizes that he's trans and gay and it's a whole-ass thing, Body Dysphoria, Bullying, Coming Out, Fix-It, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, LGBTQ history, Name Changes, Nightmares, PTSD, Partial amnesia, Swearing, Trans Beverly Marsh, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Work In Progress, aftermath of childhood trauma, clown magic fucking everyone up, coming out in the early 90s, sorta - Freeform, thank you leslie feinberg</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:47:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,636</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25904128</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlingthefool/pseuds/Starlingthefool</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bee meets Richie--for what they both think is the first time--as he’s getting the shit kicked out of him in the alley behind the Superette. There’s a certain poetry to it that will make them both sick with drunken laughter in twenty-blah years; did any of the Losers’ meetings not coincide with some sort of violence? That’s the price of admission, apparently. Blood pacts all around.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>In 1989, in Derry, seven kids try to kill a monster. In 1992, Bee Marsh and Richie Tozier both end up at Portland High School for their senior year. It's less John Hughes and more Wes Craven than either of them might like, but the soundtrack is pretty good.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beverly Marsh &amp; Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Twin High-Maintenance Machines</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I was content to lurk in the clowntown sewers, but then I dragged my BFF into this fandom so I would have someone to yell with when the feelings were too much. While watching Chapter 1 with them, I went on an entire Twitter rant about how Bev's story would be so less trite and more powerful if the character was trans masculine. All the fear about blood and puberty? Dad Marsh's forced feminization and insistence on Bev being his little girl? WAY LESS TIRED TROPE (for me anyway) when it's about gender dysphoria instead of just about a single dad abusing his daughter. </p>
<p>So here is the story about Bee Marsh, currently a tiny egg of gender bleh who doesn't have the vocabulary to articulate why being a girl feels like such a drag. The title is a line from "This Year" by The Mountain Goats -- a Richie and Bee song if ever there was one. </p>
<p>This chapter contains bullying and violence as well as the threat thereof, mentions of past abuse, and teenage Richie Tozier's gross sense of humor.</p>
<p>Less seriously, it also contains a ridiculous amount of research about lesbian culture in the early 90's, Bee with a bat, gratuitous use of bullet points, and <i>A League of Their Own</i>references.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Bee meets Richie for the first time as he’s getting the shit kicked out of him in the alley behind the Superette. There’s a certain poetry to it that will make them both sick with drunken laughter in twenty-blah years; did any of the Losers’ meetings not coincide with some sort of violence? That’s the price of admission, apparently. Blood pacts all around. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the last day of classes before winter break, and it’s only three-thirty but the sun is already setting, or would be if there was a single break in the clouds. Bee’s turning onto North Street and her headlights happen to drag over two familiar silhouettes, standing at the mouth of the alley: she recognizes Ryan Donovan’s big Carhart jacket and Jason Meducci’s stupid Patriots hat. They’re both laughing crazily, color high in their cheeks, in a way that sets Bee’s teeth on edge as she drives by, even before she sees the body on the ground. But then Ryan delivers a kick to whoever’s on the ground, and she knows exactly what’s happening. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A voice in her head tells Bee it’s not her problem. Just keep driving. Get home and then call the cops. It’s a reasonable voice, and that’s what makes it so identifiably alien. Bee shudders and stomps on the brakes, skidding a little on the slick roads and stalling the engine out, feeling sick and afraid in a way she can’t explain.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Get the fuck out of my head,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she thinks, screaming it in the confines of her skull. You know, like a normal person does. For a second, Bee feels something else’s will tighten around her, like it’s got its fingers in her gut and wants nothing more than to yank on them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Just leave</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it insists. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This isn’t your problem to fix.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Jason shouts, his voice jagged and meant to cut, and it somehow shakes Bee free of the grip of whatever-it-is. She is making it her problem now, and that little voice can get fucked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She yanks on the e-brake and grabs the half-full bottle of slushy Coke that’s been living in the bottle holder of her Saab for most of the winter. Then she steps out and and hurls it at right at Jason’s stupid hat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aunt Vic says she’s got a hell of an eye. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jason’s tocque gets knocked onto the slick bricks where the poor fuck they’ve been kicking is still curled up like a comma, protecting his belly. He and Ryan both turn around; their cheeks are hectic red, damp with sweat. Bee feels fury burn behind her eyes, and it scorches out the last lingering echoes of that reasonable voice telling her to go home and not worry about two bullies getting the last of their kicks in, literally, before everyone at school scatters for Christmas vacation. Turns out that anger is good for something. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You wanna fucking fight, dyke?” Ryan spits. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She kicks the driver’s seat forward and grabs the baseball bat in the rear footwell. Aunt Vic’s other gift for her sixteenth birthday.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I really fucking do,” Bee answers. She gives them crazy eye. Bee’s got good crazy eye, especially since Aunt Mahlia helped shave her hair down close to her scalp. It feels like all Bee’s anger, which was never far from the surface even on a good day, is boiling up onto her skin now. She thinks she might just burst into flames, spontaneously combust. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Most men aren’t more’n paper tigers, Bee</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Vic told her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>They’ll crumple quick if you show em you’re not afraid to hurt em.</span>
  </em>
  <span> And just like Vic predicted, the two boys swagger back up the street, to where Ryan’s big, ugly truck is parked. They curse her out loudly the whole way. Bee keeps both eyes on them as they get into the truck, turn it on and rev the engine. Ryan grins at her from behind the steering wheel. He shifts it into drive, and the wheels skid as the truck slams forward, straight for her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>They’ll always hurt you if they can, though, so don’t ever pick a fight you don’t know you’ll win.</span>
  </em>
  <span> That was the other part of Vic’s advice. Bee probably should have listened better. You’re only supposed to play chicken if you’re in a car as well. But that fire is still licking up the back of her neck; it’s twenty-two degrees outside and the air is clammy and bitter-cold, salt and snow on the wind, but even that doesn’t dampen the fire or the rage. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee hates the anger because it scares her, and it scares her because she loves it, and she loves it because it’s the only thing that can bury her unshakeable sense of dread and fear for more than a couple seconds. The only time she feels powerful and in control and fully herself is when her anger is boiling over. She’s staring dead ahead, at these two dumbshits in a fucking truck who think she’s gonna flinch first, and Bee feels alive and unbeatable; like he could kill monsters. Bee knows that’s a stupid thing to think; just wanting to believe you’re strong doesn’t make it so.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But fuck it; it’s too late for second thoughts. The truck’s engine roars, and its tires squeal as they spin uselessly against the slush before catching the asphalt. Time slows down, and Bee counts the seconds down:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Five</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The street is still empty, there are never any adults around when it matters, you can’t trust anyone to save you except yourself--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Four</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and Ryan and Jason look exhilarated, like this is the greatest game, like she will move because she is a </span>
  <em>
    <span>girl</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>girls have to move</span>
  </em>
  <span> and if Bee doesn’t, it’ll be her own fault, like--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Three</span>
  </em>
  <span>, like she killed herself, really, death by misadventure, like she threw herself down on a sword, a nauseatingly blatant metaphor if there was ever one, but--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Two</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but Bee would rather not be a girl at all if it was an option, and the way boys and men treat girls is only one of the reasons why, so maybe this is why Bee finds herself in this situation over and over again, because the rage and the fear just clear the mud out of his mind and it all seems so </span>
  <em>
    <span>obvious--</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>One</span>
  </em>
  <span> and that’s when Jason loses his nerve, jerks the steering wheel out of Ryan’s grip. The truck goes left, Bee darts right, and times the swing of the bat perfectly to shatter the brake light. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The truck skids towards the sidewalk, knocks over a trashcan that spills garbage all over the street, skids back to the other side of the road, then accelerates around the corner onto Congress. Bee breathes for a second, feeling the fire flicker out, all the hot, burning focus snuffed out like a birthday candle. The leftover adrenaline prickles unpleasantly across her skin, and she shivers, feeling the cold for the first time. Bee opens the door and tosses the bat back into the Saab’s back seat, jams the knitted hat back onto her head. She takes two steps out into the road before her foot hits a patch of ice and she’s suddenly on her ass on the road, looking up at the gray-smudged sky.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Y’okay down there, girl?” someone calls up from a second floor window.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee wants to eat her own fist. Where the fuck were they two minutes ago when two boys were kicking the shit out of someone? Or one minute ago when they attempted to run her down? And how can they tell that she’s a girl from that far away? What more does she have to do then shave her head, wear jeans and Doc Martens, and an old army jacket that’s two sizes too big? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck off!” Bee screams, but her voice cracks and the anger is just a hollow echo of what it was. Her jeans are soaked with brown road slush. She hates winter, hates the entire state of Maine and everyone in it, except Vic and Mahlia. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The window slams shut, and Bee pushes herself back up to standing, cold and numb limbs fighting every inch. She stumbles her way back over to the person on the ground. It’s a boy, pale skin with a mop of dark hair, around her age. He’s still curled up and breathing hard, arms still cradling his head and his gut. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey,” Bee says. “You okay?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After a second, he answers. “Fuckin’ dandy.” Voice rough and hiccuping, like he’s fighting back tears. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She gives him a second while he resituates himself--not quite sitting up, but no longer fetal. He unfolds a pair of glasses from the hand that was over his gut. There’s blood smeared across the lower half of his face and a bright, shiny purple-tinted bump forming on his cheek. Tear tracks down both eyes, which he rubs at before slipping the glasses on. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you have a bat or do I have a concussion?” he asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I did,” says Bee, but she’s barely aware of speaking, staring hard at the boy instead and feeling sick and cold. Staring at the blood on his face and getting the terrible sense-memory of blood on her own skin, coating it thick and warm, the smell of it. The kid is saying something about </span>
  <em>
    <span>A League of Their Own, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and his voice makes the sense of deja vu hitting her worse, disorienting and nauseating. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He seems fine. She should walk away. Good samaritan-ing done for the day. A guttural chuckle surfaces in her mind, whispering the words </span>
  <em>
    <span>are you still my little girl, Bevvie?</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Bev. Bevvie. Beverly.</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p><span>That reasonable voice comes back just long enough to gloat; </span><em><span>Told you to leave him alone.</span></em> <em><span>Not too late.</span></em></p>
<p>
  <span>The ice and slush burns through the thin barrier of her jeans, and it grounds her a little bit. Bee shuts her eyes and pushes all of that back down, the voice and echoes and all of it. No fucking thank you. They go willingly enough for now, but she can tell the nightmares are going to be hellish tonight. Instead she crouches down, knees landing on the cold, wet sidewalk. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can I drive you home?” she asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, you don’t need to do that,” he says, but he’s staring at Bee, like there’s something echoing in </span>
  <em>
    <span>his </span>
  </em>
  <span>head too, something rotten but compelling him to stay. “You take me home, my mom is gonna assume you’re my girlfriend, because she’s desperate for me to be less of a pathetic virgin, but then she’s gonna take a look at my face and assume I’m into some real kinky shit and that’s just awkward you know? Like, don’t put a label on me.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee’s pretty sure he’s only half-aware of the words that are coming out of his mouth, so she says, “What’s your name?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He winces a little and says, “Richie.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She says, “Shut up, Richie.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And he keeps staring with his hooded, bloodshot eyes, and nods. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The whole thing feels like a ritual. “I’m Bee. You can get cleaned up at my place. My aunts are still at work.” </span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>Bee has, in no particular order:</span>
</p><ul>
<li><span>One (1) dead mother</span></li>
<li><span>One (1) father with permanent brain damage, who now resides at the Maine Veterans’ Home</span></li>
<li><span>Zero (0) friends, but that’s nothing new</span></li>
<li><span>Two (2) lesbian aunts, Vic and Mahlia, who she met for the first time when CPS dropped her off at their duplex by Eastern Cemetery</span></li>
<li>
<span>And when Vic said, “Oh my gosh, </span><em><span>Bevvie</span></em><span>, look at you--”</span>
</li>
<li>
<span>Bev shuddered and snapped and said, “Don’t </span><em><span>call</span></em><span> me that!” </span>
</li>
<li><span>Then it was awkward for a while, because Vic looks a lot like Alvin Marsh, her brother and Bee’s now brain-damaged father. Vic even has some of the same habits and gestures that come from spending the first sixteen years of her life in the same home as him. Wears baggy jeans low on her hips beneath a white men’s shirt like Bev’s dad, has the same jangling ring of keys and heavy footfalls. For a while, Bev wanted to crawl out of her skin, thought of running away and living on the streets in New York or San Francisco or Seattle, but--</span></li>
<li><span>Then she actually started watching Vic, the careful way she was with Mahlia, the way she never raised her voice to Mahlia or Bev in anger, but let out the kind of raucous laughter Bev had never heard her father utter</span></li>
<li>
<span>Also Mahlia starts calling her Bee, and that somehow releases a pressure valve in her chest; like she can let go of </span><em><span>Bev</span></em><span> and </span><em><span>Beverly, </span></em><span>and even the stranglehold of </span><em><span>Bevvie </span></em><span>loosens, and she breathes so much easier once the weight of that name is gone. Vic picks it up too, when she notices that Bee relaxes into the nickname. </span>
</li>
<li>
<span>It’s a nickname, and then it’s a </span><em><span>name-</span></em><span>name, and if the teachers at school still call her Beverly or Miss Marsh, she can grit her teeth and deal with the way the sound of it grates at her. </span>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
  <span>Now she also has one (1) boy following her awkwardly up the long wooden stairway to the apartment. He’s looking at the wind chimes and the abstract sculptures that Vic welds that dot the yard, the Christmas lights wound into a big peace sign in the window.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie is also looking at at Bee, but only in tiny, skittish glances, as he keeps up a running commentary on nearly everything around her, hopscotching from wind chimes to sculptures to Bee’s tiny-ass car back to the sculptures because that one definitely looks like vagina, to the long icicles that hang over the slippery stairs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If I survive getting the shit kicked out of me by Rocky and Bullwinkle only to be impaled by a falling icicle while surrounded by giant metallic vaginas,” Richie starts, then pauses when he sees Bee looking at him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ll die of irony?” she suggests. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, I was just thinking that would actually be a pretty cool way to go. Make sure to put that in my obituary no matter what, okay? Carve it on my gravestone.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee rolls her eyes and opens the door, waves Richie in to follow her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie gapes, blinking behind the thick, smeared lenses of his glasses. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay so I heard you were a lesbian, but you’re like, actually a lesbian,” he says. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She wonders what caught his attention first. Probably the collection of black and white photos of women with loose hair and no makeup, frighteningly intimate portraits or closeups of their bare wrists or necks or collarbones, with the swell of a breast sometimes blurry in the background. Those are the most damning, somehow, even more than the old letterpress prints from protests and flyers that say things like LESBIANS UNITE and LESBIAN AVENGERS: WE RECRUIT. If Richie looked further, he’d see the records--heavily stocked with Tracy Chapman, the Indigo Girls, kd lang, Melissa Etheridge--or Mahlia’s bookshelves that stand around her desk, with half the shelves devoted to disintegrating pulp paperbacks and gothic mysteries, and the others devoted to academic tomes with titles like </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Epistemology of the Closet</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Uses of the Erotic as Power</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Bee prefers the paperbacks, but not by much; too many of them are sad.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My aunts are,” she explains. “I didn’t get consulted about decorations when I moved in. Take your shoes off.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie stumbles out of his heavy winter boots, and drops his backpack next to them. Underneath his puffy winter coat, he’s painfully skinny, like all of his height is a recent development and his body has to stretch to accommodate his bones. Richie shivers. He’s wearing baggy jeans, and a red flannel over a black t-shirt, all of it soaked through with melted slush</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll grab you some dry clothes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He might be going into shock, because he just nods at that and pulls his sweater off, hissing softly. Bee thinks briefly, while digging through the laundry basket for a pair of sweatpants and one of Vic’s shirts, of taking him to the hospital instead. What is she going to do if his ribs are broken or if he has a concussion? Then again, what are </span>
  <em>
    <span>they</span>
  </em>
  <span> going to do? Force him to either lie about what happened, or worse, force him to tell the truth and then do jack shit about it. Probably blame him for mouthing off to Ryan and Jason in the first place, because Bee will grow a mullet before she believes Richie didn’t say </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> to them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But that wouldn’t make it his fault. Guys like that don’t need an excuse. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She grabs a pair of Mahlia’s flannel pajamas and a t-shirt, then pushes him towards the bathroom to change. He’s quiet in there for a long time, until Bee gets nervous and knocks. “You wanna give me your clothes? I’ll put ‘em in the dryer.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The door unlocks, but Richie doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t changed out of the t-shirt, which has NIRVANA spelled out in splashy yellow letters across the chest. It’s obviously wet, clinging to his sides. Richie’s wrists are thin, and there are some bruises already beginning to crop up along his forearms. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is there something wrong?” Bee asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie is pale, hair curling at the ends as it dries, mouth drawn down into a pained line. “Look, you seem like a nice lesbian--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee rolls her eyes. “I’m not a lesbian.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie doesn’t skip a beat. “You seem like a nice non-lesbian. So don’t take this the wrong way, or anything, but can you take my shirt off?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His voice cracks on the last word, and the pallor is disrupted by a blotchy flush. Bee looks at him, looks at the stiff way he’s holding his shoulders, and sighs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can’t raise your arms?” she asks. She thinks of the button-downs she’d wear to school sometimes, if her father used his belt and went higher up her back than normal. She left them behind when she came to live with Vic and Mahlia.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie’s nostrils flare. “Nope,” he says. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee grasps the neck of Richie’s shirt and clumsily maneuvers him out of it. The bruising is bad across his back already, mottled red and white patches scattered across the freckled skin. A boot print, tread and all, spreads low across Richie’s hip. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I should have knocked their fucking brains out,” Bee hisses. The rage starts buzzing under her skin again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Calm down, Geena Davis,” Richie says. “No need to break anyone’s skull on my behalf.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Another League of Her Own joke, Bee thinks. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lori Petty was cooler,” she says. “In that movie.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie raises his eyebrows. “I haven’t actually seen it. All I know about it is Geena Davis and girls playing baseball.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee shrugs. “We can watch it while your clothes dry.” Vic and Mahlia own it on VHS and love it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She finds some liniment in the closet and spreads it on Richie’s back as they watch it. She keeps expecting him to hit on her, make some sort of move, at least a joke about sexual tension. But the steady stream of commentary, while definitely rated R for innuendo, never makes Bee feel weird or like she has to be on her guard. He does make jokes about her being a knight in shining armor and sweeping him off his feet, spinning out a weird alternative fantasy version with Ryan and Jason as mustache-twirling villains and Bee riding up like the Lone Ranger to save damsel-in-distress Richie. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee, despite herself, likes that version, since she comes off as some sort of manly hero (Richie describes her masculine physique in a way that makes something twist enviously in her guts), instead of an unhinged weirdo with a bat in her car who fell flat on her ass in the road. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At this point, they’re halfway through A League of Her Own, and the bag of ice that Richie had been holding against the shiner on his face has mostly melted. Richie hasn’t asked her why she lives with her lesbian aunts, or why she’s called Bee (which several girls informed her isn’t, like, a </span>
  <em>
    <span>real name</span>
  </em>
  <span> when she started at Portland High), or if she shaved her head to get attention. Richie has instead asked her important questions, like why Lori Petty is better than Geena Davis (so many reasons, but at least partly because she doesn’t ditch baseball for a stupid husband), who’s the lucky asshole feeling up Cindy Crawford in that Vanity Fair cover on the coffee table (it’s kd lang, lesbian heartthrob), and if Bee wants an actual cigarette instead of one of Vic’s half-smoked butts from the ashtray (she sure does, thanks). </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t realize that she’s willingly spent more time with Richie than anyone else her own age in like, decades, until the front door gets shoved open and Vic and Mahlia enter, carrying on a conversation about one of Mahlia’s students (Bee recognizes the tone and cadence) until they catch sight of the stranger on the couch with a damp kitchen towel pressed to his cheek and Mahlia’s pants covering his skinny legs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi,” Mahlia says. She and Vic stare at Richie and then Bee with raised eyebrows, waiting for an explanation. Bee’s chest has gotten tight; it’s been three and a half years, and neither of them has ever raised a hand to her. Logically she knows they never will. But she can’t stop bracing for a blow anytime she thinks she’s broken a rule, especially a rule that has never been made explicitly clear to her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> In her experience, breaking those rules always carries the worst punishments</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Uhh,” Richie says, slanting a look at her. Absolutely no help there. He looks like he’s contemplating throwing himself out a window. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi,” Vic says. She sounds only slightly suspicious, which actually makes Bee relax. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Slightly suspicious</span>
  </em>
  <span> from Vic is an overt gesture of friendliness from anyone else. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wanna introduce us to your friend, Bee?” Mahlia adds. Her tone is thirty degrees warmer than Vic’s, high summer instead of the cautious thaw of early spring. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee sees them through Richie’s eyes, gazing at her aunts like the strangers they once were to her: Mahlia’s ochre-rich brown skin and waist-length dreadlocks, the batiked blouse, the collection of pins on her long duster. Vic, on the other hand, is indistinguishable from the old longshoremen that live in the neighborhood, except for the silver hoops in her right ear and the cringeworthy mullet she still insists on wearing. Bee has been ignoring the whispers that follow them when she’s out with them in the straight world, as Vic and Mahlia call it, for years, but it hasn’t gotten easier.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is Richie,” Bee says awkwardly. “From school.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s never seen him at Portland High, but he’s got a backpack. It’s a fair assumption he goes to school somewhere.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi Richie from school,” Mahlia says, smiling. She sets the bag of groceries in her arms down on the kitchen table and comes forward, hand extended. Richie drops the towel from his face to shake her hand, and Mahlia recoils. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Holy shit,” Vic says softly. She sets the other bag of groceries down and comes closer, concern softening her features. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What the hell happened?” Mahlia says. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie blurts out, “I ate shit on the ice while walking home from school. Went face-first into a streetlight and almost knocked myself out. Bee was driving by and--” he looks at her, floundering. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It looked pretty bad so I brought him back here,” she jumps in. Richie nods a little too eagerly, because he winces. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Must have looked full-on Loony Toons,” says Richie, warming to the lie now, the same way he’d warmed to the other-other version of events he’d told before, with Bee as his white knight. “Just wham, bam, thank you ma’am, cartoon birdies flying over my head, blinking awake to see this angel smiling down on me and thinking I’d died and gone to Hea--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“God, shut up, you’re so stupid,” Bee hisses, but she’s impressed. Richie’s laying it on so thick the lie must look like a Van Gogh painting, but Mahlia is eating it up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you get him the arnica?” Mahlia asks. She stands up, flicking her dreadlocks out of her face with an impatient finger. “Let me get you some arnica, Richie.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mahlia bustles off to the bathroom, which leaves them with Vic. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ice, huh,” Vic says flatly. Richie’s gaze darts between the two of them, but Bee doesn’t dare look at him. She lifts her chin at the bathroom, where Mahlia is digging through the closet for the arnica gel. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vic’s mouth turns down a little, but she’s not mad. She doesn’t get mad like-- Vic’s anger is turned out at the world, not at herself or the people around her. Vic runs self-defense workshops for women and volunteers at Family Crisis Services, and Vic never once asked Bee why she brained Alvin Marsh across the face with a toilet lid. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vic knows the kind of bruise a fist will leave on a person’s face. Bee thinks that Vic has probably left her own share of them, but Mahlia is a pacifist and will lecture about the Feminist Praxis of Nonviolent Conflict Mediation. Bee can hear the capital letters in her mind. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mahlia doesn’t know about the baseball bat in the Saab, by silent agreement between Bee and Vic. And she won’t know about Richie getting the shit knocked out of him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie looks like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin with nerves, watching Bee and Vic communicate all this silently, so Bee mouths, </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s fine</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Mahlia bustles back in with the arnica cream and the arnica homeopathy pills, which Richie accepts with obvious bewilderment. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The bewilderment grows as Mahlia and Vic combine forces to bully him into staying for dinner and casually grill him about his entire life. He and his family moved to Portland in August. Yes, he’s a senior too. No, he and Bee didn’t share any classes this semester, but maybe in the spring. His dad is a dentist, his mom is a paralegal. One older sister -- she’s at Boston University, but will be coming back for Christmas next week. Portland is okay, no, it’s better than okay, definitely better than the last town they lived in because Portland has like, an actual music scene instead of just a redneck bar with a karaoke night exclusively filled with wasted moms screeching along to Patsy Cline. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee knows that Mahlia is excited that Bee has made some sort of friend, while Vic is trying to sleuth out if Richie is being abused at home. Meanwhile, Richie is performing a rendition of “Walkin’ After Midnight” as if he were a drunk housewife, complete with a thick Mainer accent. She wants to melt into the floor with embarrassment for all three of them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But also…it’s weirdly nice. Richie must think so too because he doesn’t flee at the first chance, doesn’t even mention leaving until dinner is over and the washing up is done. It’s almost eight o’clock by the time Bee drives him home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That was super fucking weird,” he says later to Bee, once they’re safely ensconced back in the Saab. Richie is almost too big for the car, has to push the seat as far back as it’ll go or his knees get squashed into his chest. “Parents never like me. I am always the least favorite friend. You convince their kid to join your black metal band for </span>
  <em>
    <span>one practice</span>
  </em>
  <span> and suddenly your name is mud.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’re sharing another cigarette. The Saab’s heaters are dicey, and icy air floods the car through the cracked window. Bee flicks ash out the window and says, “Well, they’re not my parents. So maybe that’s it.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I completely expected Vic to defenestrate me when they both came home. Or at least give me a balls-shriveling shovel talk before allowing me to hang out with their darling girl.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee narrows her eyes at the road. “Vic gave me the bat, you know. She knows I can take care of myself. Speaking of which, fucking call me that again and I will brain you.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hands the cigarette back to him. He takes it and says, “Appreciate the heads up, doll.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m fucking serious,” she says, feeling an edge of anger. “No girly-ass pet names, no ‘little girl,’ it’s gross and I fucking hate it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He hiss like an angry cat and says, “Put the claws away, killer. Believe me, I know you could wipe the floor with my sorry ass.” Richie hands back the cigarette.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They drive in silence for a while, listening to The Raincoats. Richie is jittery, his leg bouncing, wincing every so often as he twists uncomfortably against the bruises along his back and arms. (Mahlia had insisted he take the arnica cream and pills with him, while Vic suggested an epsom salt bath before going to sleep “if you’re feeling a little sore.”)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Have we met--” Bee says, at the same time Richie says, “So like, are you--” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They both fall silent. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You go,” Richie says. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nuh-uh, you first,” Bee insists. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She braces herself in case he pulls some “ladies first” bullshit, but instead he spits out, “So does the no-pet-name rule mean you wanna, like, hang out again?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee blinks rapidly. “Hang out? Like--?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Like as friends,” Richie says. His voice cracks the sentence in two, and he hunches down into his seat like it could possibly hide all six feet of him. “I’m not, like, hitting on you, I just meant as friends.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh,” Bee says, somehow shocked by the question. She doesn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> “friends”, not since grade school anyway, and she’s like, t-minus eight months before she ditches Maine forever. She would have dropped out of school if Vic and Mahlia hadn’t convinced her to at least get her diploma. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You want to be friends with me?” she asks, because god, what if this is the setup for some kind of prank. “You know that’ll like, nuke any status you have at school, right?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s hilarious that you think I have any to begin with,” Richie mutters. “Especially since you saw me getting the shit beat out of me before you even knew my name.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee is about to say--something, she doesn’t know what, when that weird lightheaded feeling comes back, like she’s in two places at the same time. She actually wonders if she’s about to faint. It’s like there’s a magnet in her sternum and one in Richie’s, and something is trying to force them apart. A weird panic hits her, and that reasonable voice makes a reappearance inside her head: </span>
  <em>
    <span>This will only get worse if you stay around him</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee believes it. There’s some kind of deep, bloody, and existential threat in being Richie’s friend, a promise of pain and bed-pissing nightmares. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If she’s smart, she’ll turn him down. It’ll be so much better for both of them if she leaves him in her rearview mirror at the end of the night. Leaves him and doesn’t look back. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” she says, because she’s not smart, and she’s not about to be coerced by anything, not even her own intuition and fear. Fuck that. “Yeah, I do. Wanna hangout, I mean. As like, friends.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh,” Richie says. He sounds shocked and a little breathless, like he’d been bracing for her to turn him down, make fun of him for even asking. She gets even angrier at herself for even considering ditching him. Bee digs around in the little drawer beneath the broken air conditioning until she finds a marker.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s your number?” she asks, and sloppily writes the digits down on the back of the hand she’s using to steer. She passes the marker to Richie, and he writes her number down on the inside of his wrist, tugging his jacket and sweater down over it after. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wasn’t joking, my mom is seriously invested in me having, like, any kind of social life but really seriously in having a girlfriend, it’s so fucking embarrassing. God, you’re lucky. I wish I could get adopted by cool lesbian aunts.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You probably could get them to adopt you. Ask Vic how to use a welding torch and Mahlia about gay literature and they’ll probably build you a second bedroom. They were trying to adopt a kid for, like, years before I got dumped on them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Richie opens his mouth, shuts it. He seems overwhelmed for a second, until he shrugs, plasters a grin onto his face, and says,“Well, if they ever need a sperm donor, I’m game. I would definitely masturbate into a paper cup if it means I get to be part of the family.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hits him, but she laughs too. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something clicks imperfectly into place for her then; like there’s a lock she’s trying to pick open, and she’s managed to shunt just one of the pins into place.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee finishes the drive in a kind of fizzy contentment she can’t remember feeling before. She’s excited, she realizes. She’s excited about what might happen with this. She grins at Richie as he gingerly extricates himself from the car, and thinks </span>
  <em>
    <span>he feels it too</span>
  </em>
  <span> when she sees the matching expression on his face. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, what were you gonna ask?” he says, before he closes the door. “Before, I mean, when I interrupted you to be a big fucking dork and ask you out on a friend date.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bee thinks. She did have a question, and it had felt important at the time. Whatever it was is gone now. “Who the fuck knows, dude,” she says. “Probably nothing important.”</span>
</p>
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